Pin Patrol

Let me start by apologizing for the fuzziness of these pictures.  I can only guess that there were smudges on the phone's camera lens from little fingers (I wonder whose?)

Now, how did Alyssa end up at the sewing machine??  It all started with the words "this blanket isn't working for the princess...I need a bigger piece of paper."  Huh??  Blanket? Paper?  What are you talking about??  

So, I came out to the living room to see what she was up to.  She took it upon herself to combine her princess play with her love of using scissors and cut blankets out of scrap paper.  While she was thoroughly enjoying herself, I felt kind of bad that she was trying to drape these little 3"x4" pieces of paper over the 4" plastic princesses sleeping on the tiny bed in the dollhouse.  So, I pulled out an old purple gingham handkerchief and cut it into blanket sized pieces.  Next thing I knew she had cut the thing into about 25 pieces and pulled out a glue stick.  Oh boy.  Now she is gluing pieces to the outside of the castle because they are having a party.  Oh well, it's just a glue stick.  Easy enough to wash off.

Thirty minutes go by and I hear "Mommy, will the sewing machine work on this??".  I turn to see her with a handful of purple gingham fabric that she tried to glue together.  "Well, what would you like the sewing machine to do?", I ask.  "Make a pillow."  Hmmm...a pillow out of 15 itty-bitty glued together pieces??  "I think that we could find some other fabric to make a pillow, how does that sound??"

Once we got into the fabric drawer and she found some left-over Abby Cadabby  fabric she decided that she wanted a pillow for her bed - a giant heart shaped one.  Great!!  It's hard to draw a heart...let's try the good old-fashion, fold the fabric in half and draw half the heart so that it turns into a whole heart.  Open up and wahoo!!  Heart shaped it is.

If you have ever had a child sit on your lap while trying to sew, you will know how the next 20 minutes went.  "Mom, I'm falling"..."No you aren't"..."Alyssa, you need to be on the other leg so I can control the pedal"..."But MOM, I'm falling!!!"  Oh boy.

Alyssa had a very important job, though.  Whenever the pin got close to the foot she yelled "PIN PATROL" so that I knew it was time to stop so she could pull the pin out before it went under the foot.  Of course, she was also in charge of stuffing the pillow.  "Why's it called stuffing??".  I don't know, because you stuff it inside the pillow!?!?  A great morning project giving her a new cuddly pillow to sleep with tonight.